Time's Legacy
by Web of Obsidian
Summary: The Doctor died at Lake Silencio, it was always inevitable. Someone needs to carry on his legacy.
1. Prologue: Awakening

**Prologue: Goodbye**

The TARDIS hummed sadly, softly. The Doctor was leaning up against the console, hands resting heavily on the copper rim. He was dying. The universe probably knew it by this point; he'd wanted to go out with a bang. Truthfully, though, it was more of a slow fizzle, a desire to be so great that he dragged it out for as long as he could, and in doing so just wore himself down more quickly. There would be no more adventures. No more trips, no more repairs, no more running, no more sweet human faces basked in the light of the console, shining in awe. Nothing more. This was all that was left.

"One more trip, eh, old girl?" he asked softly, voice full of sadness, so broken.

All she could do was hum in reply, make the gears and pistons inside that ancient engine churn just a bit faster, and it was killing her inside. Already the lights were dimming. She could see the timelines around her Doctor drawing to a close, fading away.

"Come on, then." He went to her console, and she tried not to leave, but she had to. She had to, she had to keep moving forward. She couldn't stop. "Oh, don't be like that, dear." His voice wasn't reprimanding, wasn't angry. Tired. Sad. Resigned. "It'll be okay. You just watch after the Ponds, love. You look after them and River for me, okay?"

Her humming became more urgent. She tried to protest, she tried to think of _something_-

A thought.

Might not work. Probably wouldn't work. Too many possibilities, too many outcomes. Not quite enough time to go through them all, to pick the right course. Infinity would give her time enough, but she simply went for the closest option.

TARDISes absorbed outside energy. Since the War, she couldn't refuel like she normally would. Before the War, she didn't _need_ to refuel. Now it was absorbing energy from a rift, from a solar storm, from _something_. Even leftover energy from past regenerations, as long as it was energy. The problem with regeneration energy, the leftover bits, was that it wasn't entirely compatible with TARDIS circuitry. It was meant to rejuvenate, not to fuel, and therefore it was one of the things she could use to help her when something in the console broke. Using it to help her fly was nigh on impossible.

But it _was_ life energy, and she could use that now.

Then there was the matter of form. She was, after all _Time And Relative __**Dimensions**__ In Space_, TARDIS. Her interior existed in a separate dimension, or, to put it simply, she was a sentient dimension. She was virtually endless, she _had_ _no form_. Infinity does not take shape, it is one of the few things that is impossible for lesser beings to comprehend. Yes, there is a word for it, and there are metaphors saying something _looked_ infinite or endless, but to imagine true infinity was equally impossible as using regeneration energy to fly. And yet she had seen into the soul of a human, and the human had seen into her, and she knew every inch of a human, every emotion, every possible thing that she needed to know.

And a spark of her heart to tie it all together, a spark of life. What kept _her_ living.

In a room in the depths of the TARDIS, there was a faint sort of blue glow. Not that such an event was really that uncommon, strange things happened in the TARDIS all of the time, especially when the Doctor was experimenting, but this was constant. It started out small, faint, almost invisible, but then it began to spread, reaching out across the floor, growing brighter and brighter and brighter until, if somebody had been in the room at that time, they would have been blinded.

When it cleared, there was a body on the ground. A young woman, maybe sixteen or seventeen, really just a girl. Her hair was so blonde it appeared to be white, falling down to about her elbows, her skin like porcelain, pale and without blemishes. Her eyes were shut. She didn't appear to be breathing, limbs were splayed in all directions haphazardly across the floor.

A moment of silence.

Her eyes flew open, and her entire body arched upwards as she sucked in a huge gasp before falling back to the ground. She lay there for a few moments, breathing erratic. It was almost like she didn't know how to breathe, but soon she rolled over and pushed herself shakily onto all fours. Her hair fell into her eyes.

Another moment and then she tried to stand. It didn't go very well at first, she couldn't even get onto her knees, but finally she managed to straighten up and totter towards the mirror in the corner on trembling legs. Her head slowly tilted to one side in bewildered confusion, eyes tracking every movement she made in the mirror. Long, thin fingers shakily reached up and touched her hair, poked and prodded at her face, finally she stared into her own eyes.

They were a deep indigo, perhaps closer to a royal purple or a navy blue, but it was impossible to tell. Swirls ran through the irises, around a black point that served as her pupil, each swirl a different strand of color, vibrant and spinning at a steady rate, churning power, yet still just a fragment of the Time Vortex they mirrored. She looked down at the rest of her body, clenching and unclenching her fists, flexing her fingers and stretching them apart. A small frown graced her features, just the tiniest of twitches around her lips, brows furrowing ever so slightly.

With more grace than before, she turned around. A door appeared in the wall, and she walked through it and into the labyrinth-like TARDIS wardrobe. There was a shuffling in one of the racks, and the clothing slid down to reveal rows of woman's clothing instead of the outlandish outfits that _he_ would wear.

* * *

The Doctor spun about abruptly on his heel as he heard a noise from behind him, footsteps on the stairs when there was nobody in the TARDIS except for himself. Whatever words he had to say died on his lips.

It was a woman, long white-blonde hair going down past her shoulders. Black jeans that flared out a bit around the ankle fell over the brown boots on her feet on her feet. She wore a rather familiar looking leather jacket over a navy blue t-shirt. A pair of wire-framed, rectangular glasses were perched on her nose, and she was staring at him with a peculiar expression while she leaned up against the railing leading into the TARDIS.

"Who are you?" he demanded coldly. In his experience, beautiful woman were never to be trusted, because they generally wound up trying to kill him somewhere along the line... "How did you get onto my TARDIS?"

To his immense surprise, she smiled, even if it was a sad smile. "Didn't we cover this already?" Her voice was quiet, gentle, but there was the faintest of edges to it. "You never stole me, my Thief. I stole you."

The realization hit him like a bombshell, a mad, impossible, utterly insane bombshell. "You're the TARDIS." A nod. "_My _TARDIS?!"

She walked rather shakily down the stairs, nodding, and stopped in front of him. "Time And Relative Dimension In Space, that's me." He continued to stare in disbelief, and she sighed. "It really is. This isn't a hoax, a trick... I had to say goodbye to you. I _had_ to."

He shook his head, placing his hands on her shoulders, almost as though to assure himself that he wasn't dreaming. "You can't fit into a human body. How are you doing this?"

"I was the Bad Wolf, I am your regenerations, I will be the Time Vortex, I see all of time and space in its entirety... and yet it will not hurt me."

He gave a weak chuckle. "Getting your tenses mixed up again, dear."

She shrugged. "Haven't had much time to practice."

There was a pause. The Doctor still hadn't moved his hands.

"You were going to die," he said finally. "You would fade away on some street corner, and we'd fade together. Like a candle in the dark. But you're alive now, and-" His voice broke. "I didn't want this for you."

To another the words would sound harsh, cruel, but to her they made perfect sense. "You didn't want me to be alone." He nodded weakly. "Oh, my precious Thief. It's okay, I don't mind. I'll always remember you, and that candle can keep burning."

He pulled her into a hug, and she could feel him shaking, trying to hold it together for just a little bit longer.

Then he pulled back, letting her stand up on the tips of her toes to press a kiss to his forehead, to murmur a final farewell in their lost language. They didn't say anything else as she pulled the Stetson off of the hat rack and placed it gently on top of his head.

A single golden tear rolled down her cheek as he opened the door and walked outside, never looking back, sun shining down on him.

She turned away as he perched himself on the hood of a car, waiting to greet his two old friends as though nothing was wrong.

"Well, then." She shut the doors and rested her forehead against the cool wood. "No going back now, I guess."

The console gave a sad, resigned hum, and then everything went to white.

* * *

When she came to, everything hurt.

It was a strange feeling, pain. Of course, she didn't find it pleasant, per say, but she found it interesting. There was a difference between the pain of circuitry, like when a certain Time Lord deemed it acceptable to turn her into a paradox machine, and the physical pain in a human body. A rather large difference, and she found herself cringing away from the feeling and moving towards it in interest. This was new, yes...

She drifted off again to the dark and broken console and the sound of distant voices.


	2. Hello, New World

**Chapter 1: Hello, New World**

It was very hazy, her memories up until that point. The last thing she remembered was the TARDIS going wild, the console sparking, explosions everywhere and fire licking at the railings. Then it all went dark, she felt exhausted, it _hurt_. Sometimes she'd drift back off to reality, hear murmuring voices, but it was generally quite peaceful, and she didn't want to wake up.

Didn't need to wake up...

Two women and a young man looked down at the unconscious figure in the bed.

"D'you know why she was there?" the man asked after a moment. "Or who the hell she even is?"

"No," said one of the women, the older-looking of the three, but probably the youngest in actuality. "She was just there, unconscious on the floor."

"She's not human," the second woman added. "It's _weird_. She's got the DNA template but nothing fits together. Hasn't got a pulse or anything, body temperature is way too low, but she's breathing. It doesn't make sense."

"So how's she breathing if she doesn't have a heartbeat?" the man asked.

"We did a bunch of scans and tests. She's got the proper organs, but they don't work like a normal person. I don't know what she is, I don't know how she's even possible!"

They looked down at the woman for a little while longer in silence. Her eyes were shut, skin like porcelain, and she looked incredibly small and young in the hospital gown.

"She's only seventeen," the man sighed. "What was he doing, taking a kid with him?"

"Dunno. Better question – why'd he leave her there? She'd need a way to get back. This isn't making _sense_-"

"...need to stop..."

The moan came from the direction of the bed, and they turned to see the woman shifting uncomfortably, eyes open but not seeing, skin rippling _gold_.

"Need to stop..." she repeated. "Not right, need to stop, need to stop!"

Her eyes rolled back into her head once more as she fell into unconsciousness, but they didn't really notice.

"...You see that?" the older-looking woman asked faintly.

"Yeah," the man replied quietly. "We gotta get him out of there _now_, ever if it's just to figure this mess out."

* * *

When the TARDIS-incarnate came to, she was wearing a flimsy paper gown of sorts in a medical room, most likely on a train judging by the noise and slight rocking motion.

Question number one: how did she get on a train? Question number two: where was the TARDIS, the actual ship? Both very important questions that she didn't know the answer to, and that wasn't good. She didn't like not knowing questions? Did she know the answer? Would she know the answer later? Oh, her head still hurt, she wasn't used to her head hurting. Or having a head.

Feet, she had feet too, right. Get up and walk, not too difficult, figure out what was happening-

A sharp, stabbing pain flared up behind her eyes, causing her stomach to churn and the world to lurch. She didn't even get the chance to sit up before she had to roll over and retch, hands clutching the edge of the mattress while her stomach tried to force out food she had never eaten. She didn't catch the alarms buzzing and the nurse running into the room, didn't feel the needle sliding into her arm, only could see the blackness closing in again.

* * *

She woke up for a second time still feeling ill, and the stabbing pain was more of a dulled, pounding ache. Her stomach was churning and twisting, but she could keep awake and sane.

It took her a solid ten minutes to figure out how to stand up – she had appeared to have forgotten in the time she had been unconscious and it was infinitely harder to walk while ill than to walk while healthy. Still, she staggered to her feet and used the wall to support herself, swaying from side to side with the movement of the train as she walked to the door.

_Can't see them. Can't see time, can't see it, can't see it..._

She walked down the narrow corridors, heading in one direction just to see where it took her. Something was wrong with time, which meant she needed to find the ship, and she needed to find what was wrong... It briefly occurred to her that her glasses were missing, and therefore the sheer strength of the Vortex could scare off anybody who stumbled upon her, but she discarded it quickly. Glasses didn't matter, eyes didn't matter... how did people work like this? So... _tiny_, but so _big_. And they were intelligent! But they couldn't _scan, _they had two eyes shoved into the front of their head and flattened ears inept for hearing and their other senses were generally dulled and their skin could barely protect them... Fascinating creatures.

She stopped at a door that lead into another section of the train. There was something back there, she could hear voices... Oh, voices meant that there was somebody coming closer, didn't it? Which meant she should probably move... or something. Time was wrong, and she wasn't used to thinking. This was confusing.

_I should open the door. I can talk to them. Ask them questions. Where am I?_

She reached for the doorknob, fumbling. Fine motor control, also difficult- there. Door open.

"Child of the TARDIS."

She spoke without thinking, surprising both herself and the meeting between the three people she had just walked in on. The other two she recognized as well, and she spoke again, trying to control the word flow and not quite succeeding.

"I know _you_..." She made a vague gesture towards the second woman, caught sight of the man, and cringed backwards, her headache multiplying tenfold. "Oh, you're just _wrong_, everything is wrong here... why is it wrong? What did you do?"

River Song, who had been standing behind the desk, stood up abruptly at her entrance. Jack's hand immediately strayed towards his hip, closer to where he was no doubt hiding a gun beneath his coat, and Amy froze.

Oh, she did love those three. Well, Jack was wrong, but he was also a product of the Bad Wolf, and the Bad Wolf was _her _and therefore he was like a child of the TARDIS as well. And however much her Thief says... _had said _otherwise, the man made him laugh, and that made the TARDIS happy. He had the overcoat too, she liked that coat. And the little orangey girl. Her _hair, _she should have tried to be ginger in this body. She liked that hair, red like the sun, like the grass on Gallifrey... And sweet River, Pond, the _true _child of the TARDIS... she had nice hair, too, come to think of it-

"How do you know that?" River demanded, voice low. "How do you know that?"

"Easy." Her gaze landed on a chair, and she stumbled towards it, pleasantly surprised at the feel of the plush carpeting underneath her feet. The floor all the way here had been cold, and she didn't like feeling cold. Cold wasn't fun, it seemed, in a human body. "It would be silly if I didn't recognize you."

They had those... things. Those black things over their eyes, the one that Kovarian wore when she took away the TARDIS-child. That was bad. She didn't like those things. Why were they wearing the... oh, what was the word?

Eye patches! Yes, that was right! Those odd little black patches over a single eye, and they clearly weren't for the customary usage... after all, the three humans had both of their eyes and would have no need to cover up a wound, so why were they wearing them?

"That's not an explanation." Amy's voice was emotionless.

Still avoiding looking over at Jack, she met the Scottish woman's gaze.

What were those things called? Cameras? Yes, she should have had a camera with her then, if only to capture the look of pure shock on Amy's face. She took a half-step back, eying her warily.

"What_ are _you?"

"I asked you a question first," she replied, flexing her fingers and poking at her palm with her other hand. Hands were funny things. "What did you do? Time isn't right. What did you do, child?"

She then met River's gaze, and the other woman was too stunned to manage a reply.

"...You're the TARDIS," Amy stated after a long pause. She nodded. "_The _TARDIS." Nod. "That's impossible."

"So is whatever it was that you did to time, but you managed it nonetheless."

"She's the TARDIS?!" The exclamation came from Jack.

This was going to be interesting.


End file.
